3071-The political economy of new slavery

198 The Global Framework for Development
I shall close with an illustration of this based on a conversation I had
with Charles Beitz, a person for whom I have immense respect as a key
player in putting international ethics on the map. He put forward a
robust theory of international justice – liberal cosmopolitanism – which
proposed radical redistribution of wealth from rich countries to poor
countries with appropriate international institutions to achieve this
(Beitz, 1979). In the course of the exposition he remarked as an aside
that this proposal did not entail a commitment to world government or
to world citizenship. The latter point about global citizenship puzzled
me and I suggested that if a world based on such admirable redistributive
policies were ever to be possible it would require the active engagement
of people exercising global responsibility as global citizens – both
in putting political pressure on governments to agree to set up such
mechanisms, in being willing to live the values they advocate and be
personally generous in helping to bring about a just global order, and,
I now would add, in being willing publicly to welcome possible reductions
of standards of living as a result of such redistribution. He dismissed
this line of argument on the grounds that we had to ‘insulate’ the
individual from too much pressure from the world. Here indeed is the
challenge.
Relevance of development ethics to new slavery
What then is the relevance of development ethics for new slavery? Can
critical enquiry into the ethical basis of development help to combat
its occurrence? New slavery occurs because of the combination of two
factors: (a) there are those who are willing to enslave others: they may
do this knowing it to be wrong or believing in some twisted moral
account that ‘justifies’ it as not really coercion or deception or as being
acceptable anyway; (b) there are those who allow themselves to become
enslaved because they themselves or those in authority over them, like
parents, feel that what is proposed is the lesser of two evils or because
they are misled into thinking that what is proposed is not slavery.
Generally the motivation in both variations is economic hardship not
to say desperation. What then is needed to reduce these practices?
First, what is needed is a legal, institutional and cultural framework
which makes it more difficulty for enslavers to do what they do, such as
effective legislation, and a public moral culture deeply antithetical to it
(naming and shaming; ostracism and so on). What, on the other hand,
is needed to reduce the likelihood of victims getting enslaved is a reduction
in the conditions of extreme poverty.